“When the police chief said you could show up with a ticket and not get in, I took that as a challenge,” said Burlington resident Mark Conrad, who stood in the darkness by himself when he arrived outside the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts at 4:30 a.m.
Conrad is no fan of Trump’s and hopes to be able to razz the Republican presidential contender during his scheduled 7 p.m. appearance.
“I just want to ask [Trump] a question that will bother him.”
Burlington has been on alert for a fiasco since Wednesday, when the Trump campaign announced it had given out roughly 20,000 tickets for the 1,400-seat Flynn. Police warned that they would have to close downtown streets and turn away thousands of people from the Flynn. Meanwhile, liberal activists scheduled multiple events for later this afternoon to protest Trump’s appearance. Local and national media, unable to resist the narrative of Trump holding court on Bernie Sanders’ turf, prepared to swarm the area.
But the day got off to a tranquil start.
By 11 a.m., Conrad and a few dozen people quietly waited in line on the Main Street sidewalk.
A group of Trump supporters from the Plattsburgh area joined Conrad in line at 9 a.m. They said they admired Trump for campaigning in a liberal hotbed. “He’s coming into the hornets’ nest,” said Michael Hart, of Ausable, N.Y. “You’ve got to have some cojones to do that. It’s a once-in-a lifetime thing.”
Many said they were upset by Vermont activists who planned protests and initially called for the Flynn to ban Trump from appearing. “That’s so un-American,” Plattsburgh resident Martin Deslauriers said, as television satellite trucks idled across the street at City Hall Park “They say they want free speech, but if it’s not what they think, it’s not free speech.”
Burlington Police Chief Brandon del Pozo was among several police officers on the scene Thursday morning. Del Pozo declined to disclose how many police officers will be assigned to the event, but said it would be comparable to the deployment for the Vermont City Marathon or the 4th of July celebration. The Vermont State Police and the Chittenden County Sheriff’s Department were also scheduled to help, del Pozo said.
Del Pozo said his department had been working closely with the Trump campaign until Wednesday, when the police started pressing campaign officials for estimates of the anticipated crowd and their plans for managing it. At that point, the chief said, Trump staffers stopped returning the department’s calls.
“We were trying to get assurances that there was a plan to manage the crowd that would show up, and their stance was that they would provide a safe event on the inside, but the crowd outside was our responsibility,” del Pozo said.
People who definitely won’t be compensated: Parents who have to leave work early to pick up their children. The Edmunds Elementary and Middle Schools — located on Main Street several blocks from the Flynn — are asking families to retrieve their children from the after-school childcare program an hour early, at 4:30 p.m., to minimize traffic snarls.
Considerably less stressed were the folks at the Kountry Kart deli, the sandwich shop adjacent to the Flynn. The deli was preparing to do a brisk business and perhaps make afternoon deliveries to hungry Trump fans unwilling to lose their place in line. For the low low price of $20.16, they were offering, a special sandwich, The Donald: plain bologna on white bread, filled with bacon slices, or, as the deli was calling it … B.S.
![Trumpnado Hits Burlington [SIV427]](https://sevendaysvt-test.newspackstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/episode427-3-4-1200x900.webp)
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Seven Days I love you, but this article needs to be edited by someone with a better vocabulary for international curse words, a very specific skill on which I pride myself: “Cajones” is phonetically accurate but not what the man meant, these are Peruvian drums. The correct word is “cojones”, and please forgive me for not explaining why, but trust me…this is the spelling to use for that word in the gentleman’s quote.
Of course none of this matters and please feel free to disregard should we become slammed by nuclear winter after today’s Trumpocalypse.
Swallowing a $20 balogna slice is no biggie for folks who graze on a Billion-dollar Schlong.
“Cajon” is Spanish for drawer, as is a desk drawer, and cajones is the plural of cajon. “Cojones” is the word you’re looking for, editors. I would assume that it’s a typo, except the same error popped up in the next article I read: Ken Picard’s piece on Trump.
In virtually every other city where Trump has staged rallies, his campaign has booked very large sites, then provided places for the overflow viewing. They then brag about how many people showed up in both the main event and the overflow.
It is very telling that isn’t what they’ve done in Burlington. Instead they have:
– deliberately booked a very small venue (there are a number of larger options available in/ around Burlington — the Champlain Valley Expo, universities/colleges, Memorial Auditorium, airport hangars, larger hotels, etc – instead they booked the Flynn),
– they’ve intentionally given out more than 10x as many tickets as the facility holds
– they haven’t made any arrangements for overflow … guaranteeing that there will be lots of angry people unable to get in, and that they will have no where to go other than the streets and City Hall Park, where they will invariably clash with anti-Trump demonstrators.
Now we find out that the Trump campaign has even stopped taking phone calls from the police department to coordinate security arrangements for the crowd.
It seems very clear that the Trump campaign wants to use this event as a provocation — they hope there will be ugly confrontations, they want to get lots of national coverage of Trump stirring up controversy and igniting the ire of angry “leftists” in Bernie’s home town. They won’t be upset with lots of heated exchanges caught on camera, and probably wouldn’t mind a few punches getting thrown.
The Trump campaign is behaving completely irresponsibly — intentionally risking public safety and disrupting the city of Burlington — all for the sake of generating controversy and more media attention.
Sadly, a real insight into the ugly circus that is the Trump campaign.
Mr Trump has as much right to speak and to be treated respectfully as anyone else. This is what democracy is supposed to be about, not just welcoming those with whom one agrees.
(And I am not a supporter of him.)
After making good use of my formidable knowledge of international curse words (thank you for making that correction) now you’re exposing my reluctantly enthusiastic bacon expertise. Kountry Kart’s sandwich is B.S. for Bacon Slices, not bacon sauce. I wouldn’t want people to get too excited and show up expecting them to have invented a wondrous chutney d’bacon.
Instead of driving to Burlington and dealing with the mob at the overbooked Flynn I am saving my gas money and sanity and donating to Bernie’s campaign tonight.
Penelope, we love YOU! Thanks for proofreading for us after the fact.
How incredibly irresponsible of this overbloated would-be monarch. Intentionally handing out 18,000 tickets for a venue they know dam well can’t hold more than 1400… Is that how he intends to run the country if there really were enough naive & gullible people to actually vote for him?
Here’s my prediction. The doors open to the venue and magically, all the seats are already filled, with all his paid supporters that were bused in from elsewhere of course, asking their pre-approved, scripted questions and applauding on cue like he is the second coming. Checking their ID’s to see what states they are really from would be interesting.
Funny thing is, none of it matters. His job is to make the Republican party look so ridiculous that Hillary actually appears like a viable choice this time around. It’s the same puppet master folks, he has a right (RNC) & a left (DNC) hand. Look at the life you have and the way you live and ask if any of them actually are representative of you?
“”I just want to ask [Trump] a question that will bother him.” Good Luck with that! Trump answers with the truth so questions don’t bother him, as they would stereotypical Politicians who need prepared answers for anticipated questions.
Most recent polling from Reuters has Mr. Trump at 41%. Expect that to go up after his ‘welcome to Bernie-ville’ reception tonight.
I don’t think his rating will move one inch after last night. And let’s not forget how few votes Vermont really offers…it’s all been a misguided symbolic attempt to do something. But the people I’ve talked to think it’s an attempt to take votes away from Hilary (as the UVM professor says). Dunno. But last night won’t affect the big picture.